Trent Oster, Producer of Bioware's latest RPG endeavor, Neverwinter Nights, has posted the progress report for the game's development over the last few months. From the sound of things, the company is gearing up towards a major presence at next month's E3 show. According to Oster, the expo will bring fans "a new deluge of press coverage, screenshots, and previously unreleased info."

As far as the game's progress since the last update, the team's programmers seem to be busy with adding more features to the title, as well as integrating as much of the set of 3rd Edition D&D rules as possible. Fans familiar with Bioware's past work will know that the team makes a point of pushing themselves to the limit as far as including as many of the game concepts as they can. With this title, they are certainly "committed to making Neverwinter Nights one of the most in-depth Dungeons & Dragons experiences possible on your home computer."

The game's artists are continuing to produce visual material of all sorts, and have been strongly encouraged by a great response to the desktop themes released to the public. Watch for more of those to be available soon. The modeling, texturing, and animating of game creatures is progressing well, and Bioware is well on their way to reaching the set goal of 175 monsters and variants for Neverwinter Nights. Interface design and spell effects are also coming along nicely.

The designers have finally begun work on the item creation system, and are intent on making a system which allows the player to define their character down to the smallest details. Right now, major work is being done to complete scripting, designing and mapping of the game's E3 demo. After the expo, the major storyline elements will also begin to get implemented.

The monthly update can be found in its entirety at Bioware's page, along with the previous progress reports. Neverwinter Nights is still aimed for a release later this year, probably in the third quarter. Bioware is doing all they can to ensure that Mac OS9, OSX, Linux, BeOS and Windows are each supported from a single package, possibly the most effort a company has ever put into thoroughly supporting a multiplatform audience. Watch for more details on the game to be revealed when RPGamer catches up with Bioware at E3 next month.